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Section of channel wall in a turbine blade near rib
Turbine blades are often subjected to extremely high temperatures. They're cooled internally with cold air flowing through serpentine channels. This image shows a section of a channel wall in a turbine blade near a roughness element, or rib, where isosurfaces of instantaneous coherent vorticity, created by shear layer instabilities on the rib, enhance mixing and heat transfer. The regions of coherent vorticity are correlated to regions of high heat transfer (blue) on channel walls. Hot spots (red) are found at corners and immediately behind the rib.
[This simulation was created at the National Computational Science Alliance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign using software developed with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation.]
Credit: Danesh Tafti and Randy Heiland/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; courtesy NCSA
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